

'J >v C. -^ 




























•^o>* :m^^^ ^•*'^o^ •«^^'-. "^ov*' 












■^ & 

^^^•y 













WW • C*^ ^r. 

•.^55^*''- o ..^^ 



^--;^^ 




•^ ^..^ 






.^^ ^^ 



^o. ^*. 











- % 









^^^^^' 



















^'"- ^<. A^ ^'^ 



^. -*' ^'4SSS\ v,^* /. 



■;* vi-" "^^ 














o^ --^ .. 




.Hq, 



cv * 



b.. 'TT,-' ^0^ ** '»: 



0^ .<H^ 



o_ * 




iPy 



o. ♦*.,•* -^0 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

AND OTHER LINES 



THE 

LAST BLACKBIRD 

i^ND OTHER LINES 



BY 

RALPH HODGSON 



NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 

MCMXVII 
{All rights reserved) 



^"-"St^ 



7 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Lines i 


The Treasure-Box 








2 


St. Athelstan 








• 5 


The Sedge-Warbler 








• 13 


The Missel Thrush 








. 15 


The Last Blackbird . 








. 20 


The Down by Moonlight 








. 31 


Holiday 








. 33 


The Linnet . 










36 


The Winds . 










. 38 


My Books 










. 48 


In Fancy Fair 










. 56 


Thrown 










. 60 


The Hammers 










. 61 


Beauty Sprite 










62 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



The Rose 63 

Quarter-Day 63 

The Night 64 

An Erring Muse 65 

An Elegy upon a Poem ruined by a 

Clumsy Metre . . . . .71 
The Vanity of Human Ambition and Big 

Behaviour 76 

Dulcina, a Bull-Terrier . . . .91 
The Great Auk's Ghost . . . .93 
The Final Dodo ^ ..... 93 

Farewell ^4 

To MY Muse -95 



VI 



INSCRIBED TO 
QEORGE ^, S. "DEWAR 



The writer wishes to thank the Editors of 
The Saturday Review and The Speaker 
for permission to republish some of the verses 
included in this book. 



LINES 

No pitted toad behind a stone 
But hoards some secret grace ; 

The meanest slug with midnight gone 
Has left a silver trace. 

No dullest eyes to beauty blind, 

Uplifted to the beast, 
But prove some kin with angel kind, 

Though lowliest and least. 



THE TREASURE-BOX 

I wond'ring see the rainbow stain 
The sea ; I dumbly guess 

Why on a wintry window-pane 
Late Ed ens effloresce ; 



If bubbles at the river's brim 

Have souls for destiny ; 
Why twilight freights the blackbird's hymn 

With deeper mystery ; 



If chiff-chaffs voyaging in March 
Are charted by the light 

Of angels' eyes whose pinions arch 
A hemisphere with night ; 



THE TREASURE-BOX 

What ocean maids through ocean shells 

Sing ocean roundelay ; 
What tears are those in evening bells 

A harvest field away ; 



What gladness fills the yellow wren 

When June is in the thorn ; 
What triumph knows the great sun when 

A winter rose is born. 



The gold-winged exquisites that shine 

Upon the yew in May 
But sadness give this heart of mine 

That cannot know their day. 



I wond'ring watch the new gnats weave 

Mad mazes in the sky, 
And guess their joys as they achieve 

A moment's empery. 
3 



THE TREASURE-BOX 

1 guess the tales on buntings' eggs- 
Who runs may never read — 

Drain speculation to the dregs 
About a thistle seed. 

I have a crystal treasure-box, 
Its stores are held from me ; 

I cannot force its thousand locks, 
And have no master-key. 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

O NOT the rain that wets his face, 

And not the winds that beat and chill, 

Not these bid shepherd mend his pace 
To-night across the hill. 

It is no sheep hath shepherd lost, 
Yet hoarse he cries, and crying will 

He cross again as he hath crost 
And crost again the hill. 

A strong man's eyes with grief a-swim 
Are like to make an angel's dim : 
Whose prayers him choke or ever twice 
He prays will angels sacrifice 
A time of blessed Paradise 
To minister to him. 

s 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

Then, shepherd, kneel and plead thy care 
Saint Athelstan will help a man ! 
What prayer a weeping shepherd can. 
The shepherd makes Saint Athelstan, 

And makes again his prayer. 



O shepherd, look ! the cup of night 
Is broke, and clouds, dividing, yield 
To thee a sign, to thine a shield ; 
Look ! comes to earth a line of light. 
From Heaven it comes and waxes bright 
As Heaven itself concealed. 



Now hasten whither thou art signed. 

And on a pitchy moorland find 

A wide and wild and pitchy wood 

As ever on a moorland stood 

With mountain lands behind. 
6 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

Where pathless lost lands lie away 

Rise mountains gray and banded black 

With forests under mountains gray, 

And on gray mountains mountains stack 
And dwindle to a skiey rack 

For clouds there fixed as they. 



And there's a stony slanting pit, 

And deep a mountain-side it mines, 

A crevice in a mountain split. 
And capped with fallen pines. 

So deep above the cape is drawn 

No winds come there nor ever sun ; 

There dusk is ever one with dawn, 
And noon with midnight one. 

Lone habitant the cavern hath. 
And lean at eve she stole away, 

And gray she picked her secret path 
As ever wolf was gray. 
7 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

A chilly wolf it is she runs : 

An empty maw's a numbing bed. 
Over the mountain's cloudy head 

Climbed, seen or hid, three winter suns 
All since the gray wolf fed. 



And on she comes in starving state 
To hunt the marsh where last she ate. 

And wander, whining, at a loss 
To rid her of the weary weight 
Behind the rib herself would freight ; 
To leave the marsh and hunt the moss, 
And howl her hunger overcross 
A land obliterate. 



She's on a bank with willow hung . . . 
What news upon the night is sprung ? 

The gray wolf there, with eyes aslant 
And nostril slits agape, gives tongue 

And knells, not calls, her want. 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

What thing is hinted in the wind ? 

Some wasted hare or sodden bird 
Dies in the grass, or feebled hind 

Is fallen from the herd ? 



Nay, none of these is rumoured there ; 

There is no knowledge in the wind 
Of dying bird or dying hare 

Or herd-forsaken hind. 



But wandered feet have run the wild. 
And in the wood are eyes affright ; 

It is the shepherd's haunted child 
Is in the wood to-night. 



'Twixt cloud and cloud a small sun shone 

And weakly ruled the winter day ; 
Was shepherd on his labours gone. 
The shepherd's boy from home alone 
Went, wonder-wist, astray. 
9 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

The sun fell like a god rebuked, 

And east the lost boy turned, and west, 

And south and north the lost boy looked, 
And is the dark wood's guest. 



As down the trees the shadow crept 

A night-bird through the shadow swept ; 

The lost boy heard her evil scream. 
And where he stood he sank and wept 

His way to icy dream. 



And wakes to see — what sees he there, 
Or is his sense still led in dream ? 

What tricks with hope his chill despair 
Who heard the night-bird scream ? 



As were there moon might fade her stream 

With beauty through wet woods and bare, 

Fades in his view a silver stair 

Lit by a fading beam ; 
lO 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

Lies in his view a fellow-guest 
Irradiant there with gentle light ; 

Was never mortal vision blest 
With lamb so holy white. 

But, lost boy, listen — is it wind 
That rustles in the thorn behind ? 

Nay, listen — look ! O sight all dread ! 
The lost boy stares and, horror-blind, 

Swoons down upon his bed. 

Ay, shepherd crying, louder cry. 
And let thy anguish, rising, buy 

New grace for him whom Terror's wing 
Hath felled, lest he a midnight lie 

In madding trance, and wakening. 
Open an idiot eye. 

O shepherd come into the wood. 
And call and hear and clasp again 
Whose eyes, if weeping, open sane — 

Whose eyes have looked on sainted blood 

And seen an angel slain. 
II 



ST. ATHELSTAN 

Look in the sky, thou favoured man, 
And raise thy joy and higher raise 

What praise a weeping shepherd can ! 

The shepherd makes Saint Athelstan — 
And makes again, his praise. 

With holy ruin grass is red 
Where in a wood a gray wolf fed : 
The wolf is in her mountain pit, 
And night's a world to west of it. 
Day tops the mountain's head. 

The grass is red ; will rains remove 

The hallowed mark ; soon Spring will glove 

The wood anew, and none will tell 

The pity of that miracle ; 

It will be told where angels dwell, 

Its wonder and their love. 



12 



THE SEDGE-WARBLER 

In early summer moonlight I have strayed 
Down pass and wildway of the wooded hill 
With wonder as again the sedge-bird made 

His old, old ballad new beside the mill. 
And I have stolen closer to the song 
That, lisped low, would swell and change to 
shrill, 

Thick, chattered cheeps that seemed not to 

belong 
Of right to the frail elfin throat that threw 
Them on the stream, their waker. There 

among 

The willows I have watched as over flew 
A noctule making zigzag round the lone, 
Dark elm whose shadow dipt grotesque the new 

13 



THE SEDGE-WARBLER 

Green kwn below. On softest breezes blown 

From some far brake, the cruising fern-owl's | 

cry 
Would stay my steps ; a beetle's nearing drone 

Would steal upon my sense and pass and die. 
There I have heard in that still, solemn hour 
The quickened thorn from slaving weeds untie 

A prisoned leaf or furled bloom, whose dower 
Of incense yet burned in the warm June night ; 
By darkness cozened from his grot to cower 

And curve the night long, that shy eremite 
The lowly, banded eft would seek his prey ; 
And thousand worlds my silent world would 

light 
Till broke the babel of the summer day. 



14 



THE MISSEL THRUSH 

I SAW the sun burn in the blue, 

And a missel thrush flew by, 

And the missel thrush to a chestnut flew. 

I saw a white cloud in the sky. 

And linnets sang — their breasts were red ; 

And linnets sang melodiously. 

And up the sky the white cloud sped. 
The wind woke crying in the trees. 
And the white cloud battened, his bulk was 
fed 

By a thousand clouds that swarmed like bees ; 
I heard the rough wind whistle shrill, 
And the clouds banked up in billowy seas. 

15 



THE MISSEL THRUSH 

O wild the day that was so still ! 
The elm flung tribute of her green, 
And linnets tossed from hedge to hill. 



The sun was gone and the wind blew keen, 
The clouds grew gray and grayer grew, 
The sun was gone behind the screen. 



The wind blew wild and wilder blew, 
And shriller screamed and louder bawled. 
And spun with fury round the yew. 



Like a bruised snake the yew branch crawled 
And cricked and hissed like a bruised snake 
Where the sheltering blackbird shrank appalled, 



And waking slept and slept awake 

And huddled stupid from the day. 

Nor heard the clattVing thunder shake 

i6 



THE MISSEL THRUSH 

The cloud that hung so low and gray ; 
I heard the thunder shake the cloud, 
And the rough wind come and die away. 



I heard the gray thrush piping loud 

From the wheezing chestnut-tree ; 

The gray thrush gripped the spray that bowed 



Beneath the storm, and brave sang he — 
O, he sang brave as he were one 
Who hailed a people newly free ! 



But all was fear and hope was none, 

For Heav'n bled flame as Heav'n were Hell ; 

Still the thrush sang blithely on. 



The rough wind sank and the rough wind fell- 

O, the rough wind died upon the hill, 

And thunder was its passing-bell. 

17 B 



THE MISSEL THRUSH 

The gray cloud burst, I saw it spill 
Black floods as skiey seas fell whole. 
The thrush sang with amazing skill ; 



The gray thrush heard the thunders roll, 
And sang and heard not what he sang. 
The Storm King claimed a noble toll, 



I saw his golden fang, 

I saw it close upon the wood 

That loud with thrush notes rang. 



I looked again : the tempest's hood 
Was torn across ; I saw the sky ; 
So green and new the chestnut stood, 



The elm lay split hard by — 

From bough to bole the elm was split. 

And above was melody. 
i8 



THE MISSEL THRUSH 

I saw the sky — the sky was lit, 

The sky was lit with sun. 

I saw a gray thrush by me flit ; 

He sang no song — his song was done ; 
I saw his studded breast ; 
And plovers rose, ten score as one, 
And ribboned in the East. 



19 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

My head was tired ; I had no mind to think 
Of Beauty wronged and none to give 
redress : 

T got me to a place where linnets drink 
And lizards go in ferny loveliness. 

A blackbird sang, so down I fell ; meseemed, 
Soothed by his note, I closed a drowsy lid ; 

And I was ventured on a dream — I dreamed 
One stood and questioned me how linnets 
did. 

And straight I knew who thus in angel guise 
Would have my news — some trick of lip or 
brow 
Guessed me her rank ; I said not otherwise 

Than ill indeed it went with linnets now. 

20 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

And with the words I got upon my feet ; 

Her look said she would hear if I had 
more : 
I led her to an ancient mossy seat, 

And blest the hour for my inquisitor. 



'* Nature," I said, " O thou whose hand con- 
trolled 
And ordered chaos to a reasoned plan 
With ' Know thou me, Old Night, and loose 
thy hold ! ' 
And in whose accent Life and Love began : 



*' Whose * Keep thou this, and thou that 
circuit go,' 
Or * Here stand thou, and thou in that place 
stand,' 
Lifted a meek or laid a hot star low. 

Chartered a sun or cancelled his com- 
mand : 

21 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

*' Who flattered with an object aimless 
spheres, 
And gave to each place, precedence and 
class, 
Time and degree, till constancy was theirs, 
And perfect system where no system 
was : 



*' Hear me ! The blackbird piping from the 
hill, 
His insolent wild eye — its yellow rim — 
His coaly vest and yellow mandible — 

Is he not thine ? Wouldst thou continue 
him ? 



" Art thou still minded. Nature, to provide 
The salts and sweets a frolic wagtail picks 

Out of the spume that quilts an idle tide 

Behind the trough where meeting waters 
mix ? 

22 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

" Hast thou a mind to keep a redstart 
dressed 

As now and heretofore ; to order still 
Thy system of economy unguessed 

That gives a shiver to his flaring quill ? 



" Wouldst thou still keep the chifl^-chaff to 
his song, 
And have him know to braid his grassy 
dome ? 
Wouldst knot and twist with many a weedy 
thong 
The green confusion leaping round his 
home ? 



"Is still thy mind for wrens and little springs 
And ferns and sudden stoats and popping 
mice, 
And all the myriad noisy rainbow wings 

That make the wood not less than Paradise ? 
23 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

" Wouldst in thy season strip the little wood 
And hap it over with a frozen coat, 

To spot a corner there with icy blood, 
And stretch a rabbit with a frozen stoat ? 



"Hear me," I said. *'Thy wood's a gran- 
dam's tale ; 
Its trees are felled ; save one its birds are 
dead ; 
Thou art unqueened ; now other hands pre- 
vail ; 
One blackbird lives — he is the last," 1 said. 



And she, '*The poised moths thy hand 

caressed, 

Sip they not wines from fuchsias by the sea ^ 

Runs clear no stream to bright a linnet's 

breast 

Or sparkle in the moon ^ Nay, gladden 



24 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

*' Sure Beauty's in the pine the heron crost, 
Or Beauty's on the heath or down or plain, 

Or Beauty's on the yellow desert lost 

In desert glare? Nay, make me glad 
again." 



I said the place was changed where hawk-moths 
sipped 
Eve's sugared cup ; nor now was Beauty's 
mark 
Upon the stream where once her linnets dipped. 
And moony bubbles raced into the dark ; 



*' Wild Beauty's left the down whereon she 
lay; 
The heaths and plains are bare ; shy 
Beauty's fled 
The woods ; fierce Beauty's left her desert 
day; 
Beauty is fled or dead. Beauty is dead. 
25 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

'*Yon blackbird with to-night will end his race." 
I stopped, and Nature rose and looked 
abroad : 

She came again and asked who ruled the place ; 
I named then him who reigned its overlord. 

** Thou madest all things equal under thee ; 
To all thy gifts were Beauty, Love, and 
Youth." 
** I pricked a vein that I might gladden me 
With flower of that my seed thou callest 
Truth." 

" Thou chosest one not fairer than his kin 
To keep the story of thine eyes' delight." 

" I gave a book to choice of mine wherein 
To chronicle that pleasing in my sight." 

" Who learned the letters equal to his task 

To open ways beyond his right employ, 

Who got him to a fiction and a mask 

And hid the book he did not dare destroy ! 
26 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

*' Not then he heard the noises in the cloud, 
Nor cried his wonder when the leaf un- 
curled 
After the wind, nor went he wonder- browed 
Adoring when the rainbow spanned the 
world." 



She said, " I gave him ears — " " He waxed 
them in.'' 
" And sight : I taught him beauty was my 
sum/' 
" New gods he found : they taught him sight 
was sin." 
" And speech and song." " He blasphemed 
or was dumb. 



** On every wind his evil fame was blown ; 

His every step struck fear and panic doubt ; 

Suspect and shunned, he armed and went 

alone. 

Or with sly wisdom walled himself about. 
27 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

" He woodman turned and wide he laid his axe ; 

Stream, hill, and heath, to all he put his 
hand, 
Taxed pitilessly all ; all paid the tax ; 

Only the sea ignored his ill demand. 

" He saw thy hills and brought a newer plan ; 

Hill, stream, and heath he tricked to evil 
whim ; 
Only the sea ignored or countered Man, 

Only the sea despised and countered him. 

" And soon for sport a hunting he would go ; 

The chase is over save for yon last bird 
Whose wing to-morrow — " " Shout me this 
last woe ! " — 

I shrank beneath the angers I had stirred — 

" Whose wing to-morrow — shout ! This final 

prize — " 

" Will deck his stony mate for holiday." 

Ten thousand hells roared out of Nature's eyes. 

She pressed her lids and shut the rage away. 
28 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

*'But knows he never midnight questioning? 

Is every sense I gave him dead or dark ? " 
I said, " He knows he reigns to-day a king, 

And has forgot the day he was thy clerk." 

*' Henceforward is this world his gaud, his 
toy; 

If bones he wills, in bones the world will lie ; 
His to deflower, infect, defile, destroy — 

Unless — " She said, ''Thou hast a remedy?" 

I said, " Save one, not I : reject, annul 

Him, seed and breed and story, or have done 

And send this world, thy Bubble Beautiful, 
With sudden moth-want whirling at its 
sun. 

She answered me, " The last was spoken ill. 

My world is good ; its streams may yet run 

pure ; 

My blackbird now is piping from the hill ! " 

She listened to his lazy overture. 
29 



THE LAST BLACKBIRD 

Miraculous old song ! Our wonder met : 
She turned away and listened to the bird. 

*' To-night," I said, "to-night he'll pay the 
debt." 
" To-night,*' I said, but him alone she heard. 

" Only the sea ! " Then Nature, rising, stood : 
" The chase is over ; yon last bird is free. 

Before I give new beauty to the wood, 
How say'st thou, poet, to a wider sea.^ " 

She looked above : small as a pigeon's wing 
A cloud came up and crost the blackbird's 
tree. 
She said, '* How say'st thou if yon blackbird 
bring, 
To wash my world, a deeper, wider sea ? " 

I woke. A dizzy man I reeling went 

Round by the hill : a blackbird hurried by ; 
Clouds raced and cracked ; to some high argu- 
ment 
Were hurrying the gossips of the sky. 
30 



THE DOWN BY MOONLIGHT 

The down looks new whose lonely slopes I 

climb, 
Yet is he old despite the dress he wears : 
Old as the dark and concreate with Time, 

Waste with the affliction of uncounted years. 

A weary head he stretches to the pale 

Of Heaven ; one bended arm of him uprears 

A shaggy fist, as if to turn the hail 

And fire of tempest fraught with new distress 

For his old brow ; and one arm seems to trail 

Its atrophied and bony nakedness 
Down to the streams that bless the living land, 
As if, to mitigate the loneliness, 
31 



THE DOWN BY MOONLIGHT 

He too would reach, as we, another's hand. 
So quiet this hour is grown, a whisper's fall 
Were sacrilege ; within me as I stand 

Shy wonder, waking, seems a common brawl, 
And even thought itself is over loud ; 
Desire alone is dumb ; no plovers call ; 

And if owls fly, their flight is unavowed 
For cry I hear of theirs : peace here and far. 
And save the moon's loved presence one lit 

cloud 
Is sole 'twixt me and night's first listening star. 



32 



HOLIDAY 

I WOKE to hear the song that early rang 
My boyhood on from Spring to fairer Spring, 
The song of wonder, new as when I sprang 

To its first note with boyish welcoming. 
O may its glory fail not from my sense 
Till Life — the Toll-bridge crost — unques- 
tioning, 

With Love alone, in last obedience. 
Turns to the Dark ; nay, even in that hour 
When clay shall merge in final consequence 

With clay, whose sod — moist cradle of some 

flower, 
Young heart's-ease blue or blest anemone — 
Leaps to the sun, I would remained yet power 
33 c 



HOLIDAY 

In my cold ear to stir the heart of me 
To heed if echoed faint such anthem there 
As poured at waking from my window tree. 
I rose and fed my soul on that sweet fare. 

I rose and listened to the wildest lay 

Brown song-thrush ever made to song-thrush 

brown. 
The wild song ended and I looked away 

And saw the angel Sunshine on the down ; 

I saw her largen yellow on the green 

Wide fields ; I saw her slowly sweep and crown 

The proudest elm the sun hath ever seen ; 
I saw her search along the hedge and find 
The bluest violet ever sent to lean 

A shy face from a too attentive wind ; 
Deep in the gloried elm the angel found 
The mildest dove that for a mild dove pined ; 

34 



HOLIDAY 

To her embrace I saw a skylark bound, 
The loudest lark that ever dared the sun 
Or, tranced with bliss, swooned from his own 
sweet sound. 

Where would my angel there a way she won 
With melody for half a world and me. 
Was never day for holiday begun 
Like that a thrush hailed from my window 
tree. 



35 



THE LINNET 



They say the world's a sham, and life a lease 
Of nightmare nothing nicknamed Time, and 



we 



Ghost voyagers in undiscovered seas 
Where fact is feign ; mirage, reality : 

Where all is vain and vanity is all, 

And eyes look out and only know they stare 
At conjured coasts whose beacons rise and fall 

And vanish with the hopes that feigned them 
there : 

Where sea-shell measures urge a phantom dance 
Till fancied pleasure drowns imagined pain — 

Till Death stares madness out of countenance, 
And vanity is all and all is vain. 

36 



THE LINNET 

It may be even as my friends allege. 

Tm pressed to prove that life is something 
more — 
And yet a linnet on a hawthorn hedge 

Still wants explaining and accounting for. 



37 



THE WINDS 

Great scutcheoned moths with velvet hoods, 
And moths whose wings bore no device, 
Blundered out of dusky woods. 

Constrained by some rare avarice 
Or deeper sense not guessed by me, 
To seek in flame their Paradise. 

Bleaching fern and waning tree — 
Tired of these the willow-wren 
Sang and slipped off^ oversea. 

No medalled thrush for music then ! 
And the blackbird cock made melody 
No more than his brindled hen. 

38 



THE WINDS 

Hour in, hour out, the dragon-fly 
Raced his image in a ditch 
Blue with cloudless undersky ; 



Or it was Night, then Night was rich 
In eyes her own whose downward glance 
Found every pool a glass in which 



No cloud impaired her countenance, 
When Autumn, a reluctant heir. 
Came into his inheritance. 



And long Night found no cloud impair 
Her beauty where, in sun arrayed, 
The dragon-fly still came to share 



Blue waters with his burnished shade. 
But the woodlands sickened surely ; now 
Never tree but Autumn laid 
39 



THE WINDS 

Infecting fingers on its brow. 
Pink with disease and fungus-dun, 
A few leaves fell from a sunlit bough. 



I watched them falling, one by one — 
The self-same leaves that opened new 
Without a spot to self-same sun. 



There came a time when Night wore 

through 
And saw no moon in pool or stream ; 
Her steps were traced by dawn that grew 



To day beneath a hindered beam ; 
And the sleepiest elm of a sleepy row 
Pawed the wind that crost her dream : 



And the woods around, aloft and low, 

Fell troubled with mxany a wind ; 

Then half the winds came up to blow 
40 



THE WINDS 

With half the winds behind, 

And a redbreast sang on a barley-mow 

A dirge to a sun gone blind. 



O now the rout of leaf and bough ! 
And O for memories of Spring ! 
To every leaf far-flying now 

Some memory did cling — 

The wood-wren dropt on a nearer spray, 

His song and his shaking wing — 

The thrush — the egg on scarce dry clay- 
The thrush that woke before the dawn, 
To first discover day. 



And the song that came when blinds were 

drawn, 
And the quiet owl-time mapped for me 
Upon a moon-washed lawn, 
41 



THE WINDS 

Under a wide-armed tree, 
Faery Asias newly sprung 
From a green, enchanted sea- 



O seemed with every dead leaf wrung 
From every branch once green, 
And on the tide of refuse flung. 



There went a leaf unseen. 

From spoiling boughs of memory 

Some grace of what had been. 



Now far beneath a billow sky 
The rape of woods was borne : 
No hedge but there went piracy, 

No thief but stripped some thorn ; 

And the bough that gave not with the 

blast 

The closer bough was shorn. 
42 



THE WINDS 

No tree in the pelt of wind and waste, 

Sheer to the dint of all, 

But seemed of weariness at last 



Herself half green must fall. 

With twice a hundred thieves to sack 

Her ruined coronal. 



'Twixt elms across the tempest's track 
Tossed one more vast than they ; 
Her story told a woodland wrack 

Spread far as woodland day ; 

From the measure of wealth her branches 

bore 
No wind that blew but took its prey. 



And winds were here in many a score, 
Scraping, screwing, gnawing some, 
Like rats on a granary floor ; 
43 



THE WINDS 

And winds to crawl and clasp were come — 
Winds sprung from a serpent seed ; 
And winds to rive and throttle from 



Starved packs of a wolfish breed ; 
And many a wind could fancy find 
Fetched out of hills at eagle speed 



To stun and bruise and thrash and grind, 
To clout and tug and clip and tease ; 
And they roared and drummed and blared and 
whined 



And bleated and whistled in fifty keys, 

And sighed and howled and sang and mewed, 

Winds of divers and all degrees, 



A preying maniacal multitude. 
Avid as they whose furies hew 
A ship into sticks of kindling-wood 

44 



THE WINDS 

A morrow's gentler tides shall strew 
Round tearful isles and isthmuses 
With an eyeless, bony crew. 



Anon, anon, nor end nor ease ! 

I let Imagination feign 

Great beating hearts in wooden trees, 



Gave wits and sense to knot and grain. 
And saw a heart-broke elm go mad 
Betwixt a bedlam twain. 



Their leaves a whirling myriad, 
Forth Autumn's windy lip, 
Fled up a weedy field that had 



No tree her tooth might strip ; 
Some fell and some made haste anew 
As slaves that heard the whip ; 

45 



THE WINDS 

Then many fell ; a far-borne few 
Lost now and later seen, 
Tossed high above a hedge into 



A tree nor red nor green, 

And they trickled through her skeleton 

Like ashes through a screen. 



So Night without a moon came on 
A land of sunless day. 
Enriching still with carrion 



The manors of decay 

Must woods and valleys never fair 

That skirt the Year's highway. 



Dread mists and mildew flourish there. 

And tumour-blooms endow 

With poisoned sweets the cold, dead air. 

46 



THE WINDS 

Naught of beauty with me now 
But, like dead leaves left behind 
Staring from a frosty bough, 
Would be off with any wind. 



47 



MY BOOKS 

When the folks have gone to bed, 
And the lamp is burning low, 

And the fire burns not so red 
As it burned an hour ago, 



Then I turn about my chair 
So that I can dimly see 

Into the dark corner where 
Lies my modest library. 



Volumes gay and volumes grave, 
Many volumes have I got ; 

Many volumes though I have, 
Many volumes have I not. 

48 



MY BOOKS 

I have not the rare Lucasta, 

London, 1649 : 
I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, 

Or the book had long been mine. 



I have not an early Herrick ; 

I have wanted Dowland too, 
Since that lover of a lyric, 

Symonds, wrote *' The Key of Blue." 



Never has my luck been lashed 
To the Mariner of York, 

And in First edition washed 
To my bookshelf: egg of auk 



Never was so rare as this 

Volume that earned Dan Defoe 
Deathless literary bliss. 

I have not Ned Ward, nor know 
49 D 



MY BOOKS 

That the rhyming knave I want 
Who did such a merry ill 

To Don Quixote ; D'Avenant, 
Too, I lack, and Aaron Hill. 



Books of travel ; books of sport ; 

Books of no or some or great 
Theological import ; 

Books about affairs of State, 



Absent are with many others ; 

I can't boast an early Donne, 
Nor the '' Poems by Two Brothers,' 

Though I have a Tennyson. 



But enough of treasures lacking ! 

If my cloak is frayed and torn, 
I will send King Covet packing, 

And present the cloak as worn. 
50 



MY BOOKS 

Are my senses gone asleep ? 

Sure I hear John Suckling laugh 
From his grave in ancient sheep, 

As, hard by, in mottled calf. 



London, 1651, 

Laboring Carew once more sighs 
Through a score of sonnets on 

Mistress Celia's long-closed eyes. 



Comes a rather female song. 

Sweet and sad ; 'tis Tommy Moore 
Singing of lerne's wrong 

Just as Tommy sang of yore. 



Near him Rogers bitterly 

Wails this oddest freak of Fate's- 
Folks, he hears, buy " Italy " 

Only for the charming plates. 
51 



MY BOOKS 

Near the " Wit's Interpreter " 
(Like an antique Whitaker, 

Full of strange etcetera), 
" Areopagitica," 



And the muse of Lycidas, 
Lost in meditation deep, 

Give the cut to Hudibras, 
Unaware the knave's asleep. 



There the tinker's wondVous son 
(Lately come into his own) 

Urges still the Pilgrim on, 

Shouts again for Mansoul Town. 



Written by a friend of Keats, 

That torn fragment next the Clare 

Lightly of *' The Fancy " treats. 
Next to Masson's Essays, there, 
52 



MY BOOKS 

In three volumes Bagehot lies : 
Wiser pen among the witty, 

Wittier among the wise, 

Never wrote about the City. 



On the broad back of his race 
Swift, there, cuts with savage art 

Half a fiend's, half ass's face ; 

Will time ever soothe the smart ? 



There lies Coleridge, bound in green, 
Sleepily still wond'ring what 

He meant Kubla Khan to mean. 
In that early Wordsworth, Mat 



Arnold knows a faithful prop, — 
Still to subject-matter leans, 

Murmurs of the loved hill-top, 
Fyfield tree and Cumnor scenes. 
53 



MY BOOKS 

Ayrshire's Peasant-Poet-King 
Sang his soul into that page, 

Stopped — a lark shot on the wing- 
Just as his muse came of age. 



There is Byron, nowadays 

Held in small repute by some. 
He must do without their praise. 

And there's Shake — and there Tm dumb. 



Fauna of my crowded shelves, 
Birds of an unequal quill, 

There they roost like labelled elves. 
Waiting mine or Fate's last will. 



On a day outside my ken. 
Soon maybe or haply late. 

These will pass to other men ; 
One will know a rarer fate. 
54 



MY BOOKS 

Book of cloud and wind and sea, 
More than all the others mine, 

Ere the Roll is called for me 

Knowest what end will be thine ? 



1 will have thee to the fire ; 

So thy Parent went his way, 
After ocean stilled his lyre, 

From the sands of Spezzia. 



55 



IN FANCY FAIR 

Fancy at her garden gate : 
Fancy may have long to wait. 
Pole to Line and sun to snow 
Fancy may have far to go. 



Memory hath dreams : the birds, 
Prisoned sobs and passioned words. 
In the waking sun they stand, 
Life's drab riddle in his hand. 



Thrushes, O be silent now . . . 
Now with song record his vow. 
Shrink not, daisies, as they kneel. 
Part they now for woe or weal. 

56 



IN FANCY FAIR 

Hope is hers and hers long prayer, 
His a loop of her dark hair : 
Hope is hers, he'll win the world : 
Fancy's sails are wide unfurled. 



He will come again at noon, 
His bright way with roses strewn. 
From the turnpike wave good-bye, 
From the hill-top — hope is high ! 



Wave her wait and wave him well 
Memory no more may tell. 
Hope is high : O then beware ! 
Gauds are cheap in Fancy Fair. 



Now a gray dream fancy weaves : 
Roses change to cypress leaves. 
He lies bleeding, dying, far 
In the cloud and wrack of war ; 
57 



IN FANCY FAIR 

Or in hunger walks and want, 
Hope a spent illuminant. 
He has sunk (God !), sold to shame 
A dishonoured, ancient name ; 



Or, though victor in the race, 
Is forsworn : some fairer face 
Lures his soul to Lethe letch. 
Mark ye how that grisly wretch. 



Wrinkled Doubt, the malice-eyed, 
Mad his midnight mare doth ride 
Fear and lies and old despair 
Haunt the lanes of Fancy Fair. 



Face them. Fancy, show thy whip ! 
Pariahs ! each lifted lip — 
Each red coward mouth will flee 
To the kennels. Comfort thee. 

58 



IN FANCY FAIR 

Take new roses for thy breast : 
He will dream and come to rest. 
In the shadows he will come ; 
Do thou fend with faith his home. 



Slow the deep tear upward wells, 
Fancy changing sentinels — 
Fancy at her garden gate : 
Fancy may have long to wait. 



59 



THROWN 

Tm down, good Fate, youVe won the 
race ; 

Bite deep and break a tooth in me ; 
Now spit your poison in my face, 

And let me be ; 
Leave me an hour and come again 
With insults new and further pain. 



For of your tooth Til make a pen, 
And of your slaver ink, and will 

I bring a joy to being then 
To race you still : 

A laughing child with feathered heels 

Who shall outspeed your chariot wheels. 



60 



THE HAMMERS 

Noise of hammers once I heard, 
Many hammers, busy hammers, 
Beating, shaping, night and day. 
Shaping, beating dust and clay 
To a palace ; saw it reared ; 
Saw the hammers laid away. 

And I listened, and I heard 
Hammers beating, night and day, 
In the palace newly reared, 
Beating it to dust and clay : 
Other hammers, muffled hammers, 
Silent hammers of decay. 



6i 



BEAUTY SPRITE 

False lights and shifting sand- 
Black way and rough and long- 
Lost men and like to fail — 
This much is ours : 

Sometimes to strike a trail, 
Sometimes to hear a song, 
Sometimes to seize a hand, 
I even yours. 

Go with me till the sun 
Mine be and yours, 
Star and companion, 
Ours, even ours. 



62 



THE ROSE 



How praise the rose ! Let praise go by 
Let us not praise where praising were 
To underpraise ; we may come nigh, 
Withholding praise, to praising her. 



QUARTER-DAY 

Death asked : the debtor bit his lip 
And offered something on account ; 

Death smiled and took a closer grip : 
The debtor paid the full amount. 



63 



THE NIGHT 

Fond muse surrender, weary as thou art, 
To sleep at last ; a meadow's breadth from 
thee. 

In yon dim copse and still, a sister heart 
Hath respite from its old sweet agony. 

The wall of night is up ; around, across, 
Above nor sound nor sense of day remains ; 

Comes only now the fitful drive and toss 
Of moths upon the yellow window-panes. 



64 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Out ! Wretched Rhyme, and none of my be- 
getting ! 
Quit ! Go thy ways ; I say Til none of 
thee! 
Fie on thee, Muse, that thou shouldst go 
coquetting 
With every losel that would sport with me. 



Now am I one whom Fate hath countered 
slyly ; 
In me behold a bard dispirited — 
Joined with a muse whom Mischance, jesting 
dryly, 
To spite my fame hath sued and brought to 
bed. 

65 E 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Where wert thou, Metre, when the churl 
espied her, 

And planned to mar the lustre of my song ? 
Wherefore was thy protection then denied her, 

To her undoing and my lyric wrong ? 

Go to ! I will to Prose and win his favour. 

Too soon my lyric wine is at the lee ; 
Too soon my lyric salt hath lost its savour ; 

I will to Prose and pray him succour me. 

Nay, go ! I'm stone : I say Til not resume her. 

Her mention adds new venom to my smart ! 

Ay, get her hence ! let pies and crows un- 

plume her, 
V And blank annihilation end her part ! 



One moment still, let me upbraid her roundly ! 

Was never bard so villainously vexed 

And put about by trollop muse, but soundly 

I will repay who hath me thus perplexed. 
66 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Thou cart-tail queen ! Go, blandish with 
thine ogles 
The bloodless breast of midnight's baleful 
king; 
From his embrace let riving imps and bogles, 
Ghast moonlight jinn, and morrow-madness 
spring. 

Lost dam of Mischief! Dost thou hope to 
melt me 
With tears less salt than those whose scald- 
ing brine 
Clings round the thrust thy evil gaming dealt me, 
To smart its depth while mortal years are 
mine ? 

She weeps, she only weeps, nor heeds nor hears 
me. 
At every turn I face ill fortune's prong. 
Yet know not whether most her weeping tears 
me, 
Or I am torn with anger at my wrong. 

67 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Ay me ! I would not mete her fault too 
shrewdly, 
Nor nag her to an ecstasy of shame ; 
Whom once I loved I would not drive too 
rudely 
To wail in exile her lost lyric name. 



Nay, how shall I, least worthy son of 
Adam, 

Glad heir to half the sins he left entail. 
Deliver judgment on this erring madam, 

Compel her to a convent and the veil P 



Now 'shrew me that would send a woman 

weeping. 

What was the work this pother's all 

about ? 

It seems some mischance found my metre 

sleeping. 

Whose place it was to keep such rascals 

out. 

68 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Well then? Well then, what doth the scurvy 
varlet 
But whisk my lady off without a word. 
And she ? And she, she says, went crimson 
scarlet 
And screamed like anything, but no one 
heard. 



And then ? And then, of course, the raff 
besought her 
With "pretty" this and "pretty" that — in 
brief. 
To such a pass this woundy mischief brought 
her. 
That she hath borne a brat beyond belief. 



Well there, maybe I've split a straw too 
finely, 

Too bitter mixed an erring muse's cup ; 
I must look on such matters more benignly. . . . 

Ay, I'll entreat a kiss and make it up. 

69 



AN ERRING MUSE 

Two eyes of tears ! What, human, can with- 
stand 'em. 

Ten thousand angers trumpeting their force ? 
Two eyes of tears will presently disband 'em, 

And list 'em into armies of remorse. 

Then come, sweet Muse, no longer nurse thy 
sorrow ; 

ril father this and any rhyme of thine ; 
Forget as I forgive, and I to-morrow 

Will advertise the world the babe is mine. 



70 



AN ELEGY UPON A POEM RUINED 
BY A CLUMSY METRE 

Gaze on thy deed, damned Metre, and be 
dumb ! 
Lies dead the Joy that sought in thy 
embrace 
A hostelry, and found, alas ! a tomb : 
Look, and with penitential tears efface 

From memory the scarlet of thy sin. 

Yet ere erasure sun thy soul again, 
Brook my brief lamentation ; let me win 

For that last effluence of my fevered brain, 

A niche in Fame's high temple. . . . Jewel rare 

As ever yet from that dim pit and deep, 
Man's mind, was dug : sweet flower and frail 
as fair, 
Too early wakened from a wintry sleep — 
71 



AN ELEGY 

For thee I mourn and pitch a peevish key ! 
Spring from thy watVy pillow, Truth, and 
hear; 
Come sisters twain, thou clear-eyed Sanity 
And stern-browed Sense, come lend a patient 
ear. 

Oft with Imagination I have bored 

And tunnelled like a mole the sacred soil 

Of Poesy ; and with her I have soared 
Above the clouds to spy among and spoil 

The furthest fields of Heaven ; at her com- 
mand 
I've walked below the sea and cut my way 
Through mucous wrecks that strew the 
stretched sand 
'Twixt western Ind and impotent Cathay ; 

And in her sight, beneath an English sky, 

IVe shared his dreams who on the Asian plain 

Left crook and shears and rode to empery, 

And half a world bowed under Tamerlane. 
72 



AN ELEGY 

Old Druids on the downs have watched with 
me 

For revelation from a silent star, 
And I, as even they, have bent a knee 

To Caturix, and sung with them to war. 

I've read the books : stained record of Man 
hurled 
Against himself; thus taught each ruined 
page— 
From birth to adolescence spun the world 
Through tides of woe, and will to wrinkled 
age. 

Save that drear lore small profit there was mine ; 

Yet this : who breaks the idols of Man's past, 
To build anew for men a later shrine, 

But builds to be his own iconoclast. 

Ev'n in the dim recess of my own mind 
Tve dared to look ; held inquisition there, 

Strange riddles solved and mysteries divined, 
Nigh laid the secret of my being bare ; 
73 



AN ELEGY 

Seen Impulse in the seed whose sudden flower 
Too often blows to hide a barbed stem ; 

Seen Pleasure, surfeit with her own sweet dower, 
Fade to a spectre with a diadem. 

There in the seventh cellar of my soul 

IVe crushed the stone where Malice tipped 
her spears ; 

And raked the dust of Anger's burnt-out coal, 
And watched with awe the genesis of tears. 

And this fair thing IVe seen : Hope, light- 
ning bright, 
But not inconstant like the sword of Heaven, 
And smiling still in her own dear despite 

When Desperation through my soul has 
driven. 

But not for me Imagination throve 

From song-born seed new ecstasy so wild, 
Nor woke lost captain's battle shouts and wove 
Wild dream so new as wert thou, her dead 
Child. 

74 



AN ELEGY 

Nor ever to Imagination's wand 

Came aught so rare from land or sky or sea, 
Nor aught so shy or bright or strange I scanned 

When Introspection bared my depths to me ; 

Nor in the stained books I found displayed, 
Though angels wept there, tear so pure ; 
nor I, 
From wrecked beliefs whose altars long with- 
stayed 
Truth's certain tide, beheld, that might not 
die, 

One pale flame kindle beautiful as wert 

Thou, unblown Flower and fadeless : lo ! 
beneath 

These lilac boughs, in warm grass pansy girt, 
I hide thy urn and leave this rhymed wreath. 



75 



THE VANITY OF HUMAN AMBITION 
AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

O NOW all ye whom Arrogance brought low, 
Whom Folly or Illusion's Judas-kiss 

Entangled in a labyrinth of woe — 

Children of Dream and heirs of Nemesis — 

Awake, arise, and let your deeds be told ; 

Come forth and in Dissuasion's service 
win 
The little note denied your deeds of old : 

Fame's door is wide, ye need but enter in. 

Behold as thick as gnats at evenglow 
They come a jaunty herohood, agog 

To turn this work — if I may put it so — 
Into a lyric Die. of Nat. Biog. 

76 



HUMAN AMBITION 

A pushing fellow, seeking note and fame, 
Went out to break a lance with Xiphias ; 

Archbishop Willson says our hero's name 
Was Coe. The learned prelate, if he, as 

One likes to think, spoke not without the book 
Before he disallowed such names as Lee, 

Burdette and Gray, and Parkinson and Hook, 
And Mackintosh and Dixon and McGee,^ 

As having claims too shadowy and thin 
For cold consideration in the case, 

Might anyway have said where Coe's came in : 
Occasion finds odd logic in his Grace.'^ 

But Parkinson, Coe, Dixon, or Burdette, 

Lee, Mackintosh, or Hook, McGee or Gray, 

He died b.c, to Pompeii's regret ; 

The good Archbishop, too, has passed away. 

1 " Life and Letters," edited by Llewellen Lane. Also 
see " Side-saddle and Steamboat in South Europe," by Lady 
Grahame-Price. 

^ As witness his peculiar views on the Ruyan Monarchy, 
" Life and Letters," chap, xxiii. 

77 



HUMAN AMBITION 

The tale, then, it is mine to tell will 
show 

To what unseemly shift a bard is pressed, 
Who, doubting not the evidence for Coe, 

Would neither in discredit hold the rest. 



Did Mackintosh know fear? The slender 
bill 
Wherewith he armed to turn the other's 
blade, 
And swift thereafter pink him in the gill, 
Was tough and keen. Burdette was not 
afraid. 

Hook eyed the fish. The argent orb of 
night 
With tender longing wan looked on the 
sea, 
And flung a wreath of kisses to the white 
Young wanton waves. The monster eyed 
McGee. 

78 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 
Gray stood his ground. The supersensuous 



air 



Toyed sadly with the shimmering strands of 
spray 
That, like a languid naiad's tangled hair, 
Shone opalescent. Lee now looked away, 



For Parkinson was bored. The lucent wave 
With rhythmic lassitude fell to and fro 

O'er many a spongy lawn and haunted 
cave 
Of dim Crustacea. Dixon turned to go. 



Then time was called ; above Night's widening 
plume 
With numerous glimmering stars was 
gemmed about. 
Whose pale effulgence fell to re-illume 

The sun-lorn waste, and Coe was counted 

out. 

79 



HUMAN AMBITION 

Not with the noise and blare of sounded brass 
And common hum that marks a prince 
returned, 
But like the gent who comes about the gas, 
Unasked, unblest, unkissed, and uncon- 
cerned, 

Truth comes to Man (who rarely questions 
whence 

Or why, if come she must, she comes so late) 
And takes the sum of his incompetence. 

And drops a tract and leaves him to his fate. 

One sore chagrined with envy of the Cid, 
Came out of Crim by way of the Levant, 

And sailed to Spain and settled in Madrid, 
And looked about and wagered a byzant 

That he would snare, disarm, and bring to land 

The stoutest cuttle in the Spanish Main, 
And jumped off Gib. and snared a cuttle, and 

Came never more upon the coast of Spain. 

80 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

Not Policy, slow tracing like a worm, 

Circuitous and dim through sunless ways. 

To crown a painful, calculated term 

With high achievement and a people's praise. 



But Impulse, blind, inconsequent, and vain, 
Called on the joyless mameluke, Githar — 

Whom John of Teflis lost to Smandercane 
When last he met the Usbec prince in war — 

To pelt his uncle Selim with the soap 

What time the elder took his morning tub. 

Did Uncle Selim wanly smile and hope 

That time would yet teach manners to the 
cub ? 

Or did he rise as, reader, thou hadst done, 
And as in honour he was bound to do, 

And talk it over with his sister's son ? 

These knew and wept the course he took, 

these knew : 

8i F 



HUMAN AMBITION 

Melodious bulbuls in the almond trees, 
The flaming carp that lit the palace pond, 

The doe-led fawns in forest fastnesses 

That twisted many a tangled mile beyond ; 

And on the windy hills the antelopes. 

And gibbering bats in scented lemon groves, 

And eagles screaming at the mountain tops, 
And in the gloomy cedars cushat doves ; 

And in the hot blue sky the wand'ring 
crane, 

And in the hot blue sky the circling kite. 
And on the hot, eye-baffling desert plain. 

Dry, gliding things of fell or futile spite ; 



And in the folded leaf the folded worm. 

And dreaming in the bark the chrysalis. 
And in the soaring, wind-borne seed the 
germ 

Of jungles yet to know their genesis; 

82 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

And at the lonely well mid Ira's heat, 
In tent or dhow or bagnio or bazar, 

At silent tomb or in the swarming street. 
From Trebizonde and Kars to Bussarah, 

From Antioch to Tartar Samarkand, 
Boor, bassa, bedouin, infidel, and Turk : 

These knew and wept Githar's mad folly, and 
These knew what supervened upon his work. 

No tyrant drunk with pride and armed with 
power, 

His throne a shambles and his music war. 
No hero hot and ripened to the hour, 

And for its quick salvation singular. 

Was Jil the Giaur, a lad of Ascalon, 

Whose humour crost the toothed thing of 
Nile: 
His tibia turned up, and long time won 

From women tears, from men a mirthless 
smile. 

83 



HUMAN AMBITION 

At Susa by the Midland Sea, one Tegg, 
A potboy and reputed for a quiz, 

No reptiles handy, pulled the pieman's leg ; 
The boy, however, got away with his. 

The Bagdad Pipe-rolls tell how one, a beau. 
Kicked McHaroun, the barber, for a joke. 

How caution ruled the canny figaro. 

And what Mac done to pay the fancy bloke. 



Now from the gloom that wraps two nameless 
stones. 

The shades of . . . and . . . invite my pen 
To trace their faulty day, and from their bones 

Pick wisdom in the name of living men. 

Their earthly habitat was Bagdad town, 
And, as coevals of the barber Mac, 

Were subjects of that prince who owed his 
crown 
To brother Achmet sleeping on his back. 

84 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

With soundy argument at dawn they met, 
And saw the sun go down the Occident 

(Ay me ! where late another sun had set 
For Avon stream) with soundy argument. 

They bragged in terms of angle, hound, and 
lure, 

Of family, of friend, of dice and ball, 
Of virtue, vice, and love, and literature. 

And grew, by easy stages, personal. 

" Thou cringing turnspit ! with thy kin debate ! 

Peace, ere some mastiff tire of thee and thrust. 
With too much honour for thy mean estate, 

A peevish paw and merge thee with the 
dust ! " 

" Nay, upstart bantam, strut with them thy 
size ; 

Crow back thy kidneys' with an equal note ; 
Contend with such as, beating thee, would prize 

The lowly glory of thy silenced throat ! " 

85 



HUMAN AMBITION 

" Be dumb, glib pyot, lest thy noise offend 
The eyried falcon's sense till, wearied, he 

Incline his wing thy way and condescend 

To stoop and strike and, striking, cancel 
thee ! " 

They scowled, lip weary ; stars came over new ; 

The stars looked on them and a moonbeam 
fell; 
The moonbeam lit them as they went unto 

An antique chamber looking on the Mall. 

And there for aye they laid their tongues to rest, 
And took them staves and locked the attic 
door, 

And drew the window-blind, and never guessed 
The frail condition of the attic floor. 

So stood these lads to arms, all unaware 

What fiends and angels pitied them or mocked. 

What fiends and angels trod the attic stair. 

And entered by the door on mortals locked. 
86 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

Thus, masking in the winter face of Truth, 
Came Disillusion, dreary ghost, and sped 
A fletched arrow barbed with Reason's 
tooth — 
That instant Hope fell bleeding and lay 
dead. 



Came Hate, sure signet still of serpent power 
In human hearts, and with obscene excess 

Joyed in the clasp of Scorn ; the pride and 
flower 
And pink of devildom came there to press 



Their sovereign's loathly suit with added 
spite 
For that dread Hour ere yet the first slow 
beat 
Of young Time's pulse responded to the 
flight 
Of years ; came thither, too, on wandering 
feet 

87 



HUMAN AMBITION 

Whom men name Chance, nor seemed he well 
to know 
What brought him to that place, what 
faithful star 
Or faithless urged his stay, yet did he throw 
Among his peers assembled wide and far^ 

If I may use the term when all were met 
Beneath a ceiling twelve feet by fifteen — 

No little consternation, so he set 

A good example, and no more was seen. 

Now Expectation waited in the air. 

And ten-tongued Rumour from her leash 
ran free — 
A mouthy brach ; came from her fetid lair 

The bat-eyed harridan old Prophecy, 

Her ashen locks wild strewn about her brow ; 

And License came, sweet Liberty's rude twin ; 
Mute over all hung heedless Fate, and now 

The palsied despot Crisis shuffled in. 



AND BIG BEHAVIOUR 

Here leave the lads : I would not were de- 
tailed 

Their story further ; only would I tell 
That midnight's gilt elaboration paled 

Above a silent attic on the Mall. . . . 



The Caliph Ali went to Ispahan 

And backed a mule there in a steeple- 
chase ; 
His fancy won, and then the bookie ran ; 

The punter lost a pony on the race. 

« 

Likewise the Cypriot El Ezra, he 

Who took a tester to a ducatoon 
About the colt by Nix-Mnemosyne 

To win the Sherbet Stakes at Scandaroon, 

What fun was his .? Who so will stake his lot, 
Impelled thereto by nescience or whim, 

Cupidity or innocence or not, 

On Chance's colours, let men pray for him. 



HUMAN AMBITION 

Yet may he sit serene and well content, 
When others nose the future for his hurt, 

Who, beautiful and wise and prescient, 
Shall gamble all he hath upon a cert. 

Ah, little thought King Cheops long ago — 
Yet wherefore, to what end, why deeper 
drink 
At brackish wells and fountains of old woe ! 
What matters now what Cheops didn't 
think ! 

What matters now what siren song beguiled 
The steps of Mna, most loved of Andas's 
sons. 

Or that in Coac's sun-charred desert wild 

He wrote repentance with his whited bones ! 

Nay, cease ; Dissuasion cannot surely ask 

A shrewder schedule of Oblivion's gains ; 

O cease ! my muse is weary of her task, 

And would on other themes expend her pains. 
90 



DULCINA, A BULL-TERRIER 

DuLCiNA was, then suns rebelled 
And trod th' eternal word ; 

To every ball its limits held, 
The universe was stirred. 



World embryons, in chaos rolled, 
Knew system at her cry, 

And hoary planets ages cold 
Policed anew the sky. 



Suns came and sun*s star's satellites 

To sing Dulcina's power. 
And myriad moons left myriad nights 

To keep a pagan hour. 
9^ 



DULCINA, A BULL-TERRIER 

In rebel red extravagance 
The flaming legions came ; 

In her transplendent brilliance 
They paled to candle flame, 



And praised above all dams her dam, 

And gave her sire reward, 
And hailed me blest o'er all who am 

Her bondsman and her bard ; 

Who sees in her all things glassed fair. 

And Paradise would fly. 
That wanting her were angel bare 

And drear felicity. 



92 



THE GREAT AUK'S GHOST 

The Great Auk's ghost rose on one leg, 
Sighed thrice and three times winkt, 

And turned and poached a phantom egg, 
And muttered, "I'm extinct." 



THE FINAL DODO 

The final Dodo gathered wool 
Upon a mountain side ; 

His energy was wonderful, 
And finally he died. 



93 



FAREWELL 

Go, little book ; fear not thy fate ; 

Though men deride and rail 
And pass thee by, yet Truth is great. 

By Jove ! and will prevail. 



94 



TO MY MUSE 

O MELic Muse, whose constant love 
Sustained my timorous reed ; 

Darned threadbare Fancy's vest, or wove 
New garments to her need ; 

Cheered Metre when his heart was down, 

Or gently plied the spur, 
And brought us all to Finis Town 

To seek a Publisher : 

Go not ! Brave heart, and gay as true, 

Till Time ebb out stay by 
To teach my straw, then let us two 

Pipe down Eternity. 



95 




Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &- Co. 
Edinburgh <2r> London 



31 i 




^ ^'TVV* A <^ 'o,» .^ ^ «... 4* 

















• -c5St\.^* O 



£?> 



.•?^°'0 








" y °^ — A- 




















• ^S Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

• ^1 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2009 



^ 
"^^ 



\<^ t . ^*^ * " ' * c»^ • . ^^y*' PfeservationTechnologies 

^ v*i6» *<&'*« ^ -Jp »*.^!f>Lf'»- '^ A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 




.^!:^ 




1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



«>' -Cc 



2^' ^^-' •»- 




V * ' • "^ cv <p^ . • • • ' '^^ "> 












:- >„ c-^ 








^' 










^°/^xK>- ./^>^''^^ ^°-4a^%°- 














0' ."V 









'^oV^ 



-^^^ 



♦ ^1 V' 




.^^ 






.c,^^^. 



v-^ 




.c^^^r 



